


Photosynthesis

by charons_boat



Category: The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: Best Friends to Enemies, Brothers, Brothers to Enemies, Corruption, Death, Dryads - Freeform, Fighting, Hurt, Legends, Murder, People Eating, Regret, Rotting, Violence, War, being captured, best friends to strangers, but jacob doesn't know that eric exists, escaping, myth, stories, sunbaeric are brothers, tree spirits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:01:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24597937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charons_boat/pseuds/charons_boat
Summary: For the longest time, Sunwoo and Jacob were well-cared for, and the brothers had grow up happy and peaceful as could be. When war overcame their home, things went terribly wrong.
Relationships: Bae Joonyoung | Jacob & Kim Sunwoo, Lee Sangyeon & Son Youngjae | Eric
Kudos: 3
Collections: monsterdayz





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The pictures that inspired this.... [sunbae](https://twitter.com/catfacekathryn/status/1269782383747903496?s=19)
> 
> i hope you enjoy,, thank you to [@satanshyuck](https://twitter.com/jaemarking) on twt! for partial inspiration!

For a long time, the two of us were well-loved and well-kept. Jacob and I grew up in a peaceful little garden that was lovingly tended to by an old gardener. The weeds were kept at bay, and we had plenty of flowers surrounding us. There had been only one other tree, but its spirit was old and tired, so we'd never met him. We talked to the spirits of the flowers to pass time: they were almost always awake, and they always had gossip about the people who had planted our seeds and allowed our growth within their little walls. The flowers were beautiful and refreshing, but Jacob and I liked watching the youngest member of the household. 

The first time we saw her, she was an infant. Her big eyes had taken in everything with an innocent curiosity, and she had giggled and burbled happily when we peeked at her from behind our tree trunks. I think the both of us felt that we had to protect such a pure innocence, so we tried to come out to say hi everytime we felt her presence in the garden. It was a difficult thing to miss, the way she put everything in the garden as ease. She radiated an aura of calmness and happiness that was so infectious that even the old tree was put to rest. 

It seemed that she grew too quickly because time always passed differently for us. The flowers were always different everytime we woke up, and the little girl had grown more everytime we woke up again. It was easiest to do so when she stood in front of us, and if she touched our trunks it became harder to stay asleep than it was to wake up. She always laughed happily and clapped eagerly when we popped our heads around our trunks. She gave us names in her language and taught us a lot more about it: we'd had a basic understanding of Korean, as she called it, but with her help we were able to have conversations with her and the gardener. The old man hadn't been surprised to meet us because he believed in the old stories that he'd been told by his mother and grandmother. 

When she got hurt, the entire garden woke up. She came running to the two of us crying every time, and we kissed her scrapes and cuts better for her. She'd asked once why her wounds always healed so quickly after she came to us for help, and we told her it was because we used nature magic to help her. We told her the truth, which was more than her parents told her. Her parents hadn't told her about the war that had been brewing since long before she was born. They hadn't told anyone despite having the knowledge. 

When their secret knowledge became public, it was in a violent way that no one could ignore. We heard the cries of trees being burnt and cut down, and that was our first warning of what was to come. We stayed awake as long as we could, wanting to tell the girl and the gardener what was happening. The little girl was locked away inside, though, and we couldn't tell her. We couldn't warn her like we had the gardener. The old man had promised to try and get the warning to her, but in the end he'd had to leave under the cover of night because he'd been threatened by the girl's parents. Weeds began to grow up again, and a week passed before the devastation reached our home. 

The invaders came with fire and big battering rams. They shattered the doors to the girl's home and fire licked up the walls. They broke the glass windows and threw things out the window. Some of the things they threw caught fire, and a terrible wind picked up and began to spread embers around the garden. We knew that it would take a while for things to burn out because it had rained recently, but nothing could last long against heat. We pulled out of our trees and began herding animals away from the garden. We told them to run as far as they could and find new homes. The flowers wouldn't stop crying, and the old tree wouldn't wake up. The pond spirit led its denizens away through an underground river that connected to it. 

All of a sudden, a window high up the building was flung open. Something was thrown out of it, and I realized that the little girl had found a way to escape. She dropped the last few feet and fell over, but she pushed herself to her feet and turned away from the stone walls of her home. She ran towards us, and I caught her as she flung herself at us. 

"Joonyoung, Sunwoo, please help me," she pleaded. It would only be years later that Jacob discarded the name she gave him and started going by Jacob. He never told me where he found the name. "They're burning everything and they're fighting the guards and I don't know what to do!" She was sobbing loudly, and I could feel the cuts in her feet as if they were my own. 

"Please sit down so I can take care of your feet," I asked her. She dropped almost immediately, but I didn't realize why until my attempts to heal her feet didn't work. I looked up, and I saw the vibrant red stain that was quickly spreading down her white nightgown. Jacob screamed in anguish, and I saw him clutching tightly at the sides of his head when I looked towards him. He dropped to his knees and tears fell from his wide-open eyes. I saw pain and rage mixing together in them, and that scared me more than anything because I'd never seen him even close to being mad at all. He struggled to his feet. 

"Sunwoo, don't let them do anything else to her," he spat out, his jaw clenched and his teeth grinding together. Without another word, he started attacking the men who'd entered the garden with crossbows and swords. I gathered her limp body up in my arms and stumbled unsteadily around the back of my tree, pressing my back against it as I sat down and cradled her as close to my chest as I could. With a trembling hand I pulled the bolt from her back and pressed my hand against the open wound. No matter how much magic I poured into her body, nothing would heal. Her soul had well and truly departed. I could feel myself slowly dying as I continued trying to bring her back, and my vision darkened rapidly. 

Then, Jacob's tree lit up with fire. I wrenched my eyes open and stared in shock. His tree was the only thing in the vicinity that was on fire, the flames at the bottom of it quickly climbing higher and higher, and I realized that he was on fire himself. I set her against the trunk of my tree and pulled myself to my feet. When I looked around the trunk, I saw him still fighting the strange men. The house was engulfed in flames, far beyond saving now, and Jacob's clothes were sending up smoke and embers in the wind. His hair curled from the heat, and reddened skin was revealed wherever bits of burned clothing fell away. I ran towards him as fast as I could, tripping and nearly falling over most anything in my way. 

When I reached him, there was no one else in sight. He fell to his knees again, and I kneeled down beside him. I pulled the burning clothes off of him, and he was too tired to do anything but let me. His skin was bright red and terribly hot, and I did my best to help him. 

"Sunwoo," he murmured. I stopped for a moment. "I can tell you've barely got anything left. Stop it before you kill yourself." I shook my head rapidly, trying to find the words to tell him that healing him was the only thing I had left to do. "Don't cry, Sunnie. You look terrible when you cry." He tried to laugh, but it turned into a cough. 

"Joonyoung," I sobbed. I hadn't realized I was crying. I wiped my tears away urgently, because seeing my brother and helping to make him all better was more important. "You're hurt! I have to help you." He shook his head and wiped away tears. "I'll be okay. If you use up all your magic and hurt yourself because of me, I'll be angry." I held his hand tightly and tried to stop crying, but it was impossible. They just kept falling, an unstemmed flow that had begun as sorrow and morphed into helplessness. When I felt the soft brush of petals, it took a while to realize that the flower spirits had come to help. They were all wilted, but they poured their all into helping him. His skin scarred over, and while it wasn't as perfect as it would've been if I were the one to help him, it worked. His breathing eased, and I carried him back to his tree. He sank into the dirt when I laid him down across his roots, and I took a moment to sit there and let out the rest of my tears before climbing back to my feet. 

I buried the little girl in front of our trees, and then I sat in front of the grave with my head hung and my hands clenched tightly in the grass. For the first time, I slept outside my tree. I dreamt about the attack, and when I woke up the grave had grown grass again. Everything had grown up around me, and I had to pull plants out of my clothes. I sat up and realized I couldn't see or feel Jacob. I scrambled to my feet and called out for him. 

"Joonyoung!" There was no response. "Joonyoung!? Where are you?!" I stumbled around the overgrown garden sobbing. The pond had turned green with growth and the flowers had been choked out by weeds. "Joonyoung, stop it! I'm scared! Please come back!" I stumbled back over to his tree and put my hand against the charred bark. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the feeling he'd had before, but it was gone. Instead, there was something darker and meaner. "Joonyoung! Please! Talk to me!" I hit the trunk withe palm of my hand and felt a spike of anger from the darker thing inside the tree that had replaced my brother. I pushed away from the tree and tripped over a root, barely catching myself with my hands. "Fine! Stay inside and rot then! See if I care!"

Looking back, I shouldn't have said it. I was angry, though, and hurt. Instead of staying and apologizing, like I should have, I walked away. I went through the burned down house and I saw the charred remains of a life neither of us had ever seen before. I didn't know what anything was or what it had been used for. The little girl had never been able to bring things out so she could show us and tell us what they were. Her room was blackened, and the floored creaked loudly under my feet. I walked through her room and tried to find clues about what her life had been like, but everything I could find was burned to a crisp. 

All of a sudden the floor gave out, and I fell through the floor to the room underneath it. I could feel the scratches running up my torso leaking sap as I stared up at the jagged boards above me. Another part of the floor gave out and her heavy table with the reflective surface at the back fell through. I screamed when it landed on my left foot. I sat up and tried to push it off my foot as my vision blurred from the tears I couldn't stop. Floorboards fell on me from above, and I hunched over and covered my head with my hands. I sniffled and pushed the burnt boards away. I couldn't move the thing that had fallen on my foot, and I screamed again when pain shot through my leg because I moved it wrong. 

I'd never used destructive magic, but I pressed my hand against the heavy drawers beneath the table's surface and willed magic into the charred wood. I kept wishing for it to get easier to move, until I suddenly exploded. Everything blew away from me and I quickly got to my feet and struggled out of the house. The walls were stone in this room, so I leaned against them and tried not to move my foot too much. Every time my left foot brushed against something, I had to force back the urge to scream. I grabbed a ruined sword from a long-dead body and used it like a crutch. I fell against the trunk of my tree when I made it back. It pulled me back in as soon as I touched the bark, and I almost missed the long scratches that had opened up along the trunk. Before everything went black, my heart ached for the damage I'd caused to my own tree.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of blood and eating people

I woke after what felt like a long and dissatisfying sleep to find the two of us surrounded by ruins and weeds. The grasses had grown far too high, brushing against my knees as I stood and stared, utterly disoriented. I stumbled forward and found that I couldn't walk normally: my tree had done the best it could, but bones were much harder to fix than the deep scratches had been, and my foot hadn't healed properly. I turned around and saw that the breaches in my bark had almost healed over completely. _His_ tree no longer showed signs of being burned, but I knew he would. I limped over to his tree and hesitantly placed my hand flat against his bark. When I closed my eyes and concentrated on finding him within the tree, there was nothing. I let out a sob and wrapped my arms around the tree, screwing my eyes shut against the onslaught of emotion.

"Joonyoung!" My nose was running, and my voice was chock-full of the broken up pieces of my heart. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I-I shouldn't h-have t-t-told you to r-rot! I didn't want that to happen, I-I'm so sorry! Joonyoung, please-"

"I don't go by that anymore, Sunwoo." I wrenched my eyes open and pulled back, staring at the tree. I turned around only when I found nothing in front of me. I wish I hadn't turned around.

It was clear that he had changed. His hair had gone a little lighter, to a blond-brown, and I couldn't find any kindness in his face, only scorn and annoyance. He wore different clothes, the black and white shirt under his black blazer made of some material I'd never seen. The slacks he wore were just as dark as the jacket. That wasn't what made the change most obvious, though. No, what made it most clear that my brother was long gone were the crimson splatters across his shirt and face, and the blood dripping into the grass. His hands and sleeves were drenched with it.

"You've been asleep for a long time, little brother," he told me softly. I crossed my arms over my stomach and nodded.

"I know. I… I got hurt. It still didn't- I'm mostly healed," I said quietly. Out of nowhere, the grass between us withered up and fell to the ground. I knew it was his doing when he walked closer and clucked his tongue at me.

"Your foot looks terrible," he said casually. He glanced at my tree and saw the scratches that were still slowly being covered. "I suppose that's healed properly, though?" I swallowed thickly and nodded. I wiped my nose and my eyes with the long white sleeve of my shirt. I dropped my arm back down, and he sighed. "I go by Jacob, now. You need new clothes; those things are ancient." When he held his arms open, I couldn't stop myself from limping over to him and pulling him against me as tightly as I could. He didn't feel right. He was too hard and cold, like all life had abandoned him and left behind a husk. Jacob laughed when he pulled away.

"Now you really need new clothes," he said, giggling so much he had trouble talking. "This shirt is all stained now." I looked down and saw bright red splotches spreading through the white material of my shirt. "Come on," he pleaded as he tugged on my hand; there was a strange slippery, sticky quality to his hand and I nearly gagged. "Let's go find you some new clothes." I pulled my hand away as gently as I could.

"I can, uhm, make some in the tree," I told him. He narrowed his eyes at me. "I just, uh, think they'll fit better and look better if I do it that way! I remember that the people that used to live here always… their clothes were odd." Jacob nodded and I limped back over to my tree. I let it take me back in, and I worked on new clothes while I was inside the tree. It helped me, and I partially based the new clothes on Jacob's. I exited my tree some indeterminate time later and found Jacob waiting, still in the same bloodstained clothes though his hands were now clean. His smile was meant to look like the same one he'd always given me, but it just wasn't the same.

"That looks really nice, actually," he told me. The approval in his voice was strange to hear after so long, especially considering what my last words to him were. I glanced down, curious to see what I'd come up with. I was wearing black slacks much like Jacob's, but I was wearing what later learned to be a white turtleneck under a black and white plaid blazer.

"Th-thank you," I murmured. I wrung my hands together and glanced up at my brother through my dark brown fringe. Sometime after that first time coming back outside in my new clothes, some girl would tell me that my hair looked like dark chocolate. Jacob would explain that she'd been flirting, and I'd discover another one of humanity's strange habits. "Uhm, what have you been… doing? While I was asleep?" His smile grew even wider, and I got scared.

"I _was_ hoping you'd ask," he told me. He took hold of my hand again, and this time I was helpless but to follow him wherever he decided to pull me. I thought that maybe we'd only stray a few yards away from the old ruins, but he kept going even after that. On and on, through thick stands of trees that I'd never met or seen, until we reached the edge of the forest. There was a long, shallow hill in front of us that led down to a collection of strange shapes. "This," he said proudly, as if it were his to claim, "is a city. There are a lot of people down there. They're… ah, I can't explain it. You'll see for yourself soon enough." He led me down the hill, smiling widely like he'd done when we were kids. It still felt wrong despite looking the same.

Walking into the city was like entering an entirely different world. The place smelled terrible, and the sheer amount of bodies that suddenly appeared around us sent a muddled sea of scents into my nose. I cringed and clung closer to Jacob simply because he was the only thing I knew in this noxious place. He walked into a small building, and he whispered into my ear that it was a store. It sold a wide range of old books and strange little statues and rocks. Someone called his name, and Jacob pulled me along with him. We were greeted by a dark haired man.

"Sam, this is my little brother Sunwoo! Sunwoo, this is Sam! We've become friends recently," Jacob told me.

"I'd hardly call five years 'recently', Jacob," the man said. Jacob just smiled, and the man leaned over the counter and extended a hand. I took it warily and he shook it firmly. "It's nice to finally meet you. Jacob has told me a lot about you. I see that you aren't partial to wearing shoes either, hmm?" I glanced down at my bare feet and then at Jacob.

"No, not really. I've never really needed to wear them," I told the man. He hummed and nodded.

"Jacob told me that you were in a coma," the man asked. I nodded and bit my lip.

"Yeah. I uhm, got hurt pretty badly. I guess I just needed time to heal," I told him.

"We've never really been too social, so I can almost guarantee he's never heard any of the really good stories about this city," Jacob said. Sam looked interested and smiled.

"I could tell him some," he offered. Jacob smiled and responded with, "That's why I came here first! I want you to tell him all the best stories."

"Stories," I asked nervously. The man behind the counter nodded sagely as Jacob wandered off.

"This area has a lot of interesting myths and stories. Here, come with me and I'll tell you some." He walked around the counter and off towards a closed door. I limped after him, and he stood by the door waiting for me once he reached it. "I didn't realize your foot was, uhm…" I nodded.

"That's why I was asleep. I also got scratched up my stomach and chest, but I think that probably healed a lot better," I told the man. He looked shocked.

"What happened," he asked me as he opened the door. I bit my lip.

"I fell through the floor and my foot got crushed when a heavy bit of furniture fell through after me," I told him. I sat down in a chair across the table from him, and stared off into space. "It hurt a lot." My voice was strangely absent to my own ears, and the man nodded.

"I'm sure it did," he sympathized. I nodded and focused on him as he began to speak again. "Let's see, one of the best stories about this area… oh! I'm sure you've seen the woods at the outskirts of the city, right?" I nodded, and he smiled widely. "That place has some of the greatest stories and myths. I'll tell you two today, since I'm sure the two of you have a lot to do. The first one goes something like this. A rich family used to live in the forest, in a great stone house that could almost be called a castle if it had a few more buildings and a tower or two along with it. The family consisted of the husband and wife, their young daughter, and their staff. They were nobles of the old kingdom that reigned over this region, and it is said that their daughter was the most beautiful girl in the country." A bright smile on pretty pink lips flashed before my eyes, being covered up by the long, silky strands of her black hair as her head fell forward to conceal her infectious laughter. "Men all across the country wanted to marry her, but there was a war brewing." Trees screamed as they were cut down and burned. "The girl could've ended it all if she would have only married the King of the enemy country, but her parents would not give her up. So the enemy invaded." A girl escaped only to be killed, fire licked up stone walls, caught Jacob's clothes. The fighting stopped but Jacob was still burning. Healing, and burial, and one of my longest nights. "They killed the girl in the confusion, and they left the ruined house to tell their King they'd failed to get the girl. Rumor says that the house still stands in the woods, guarded by savage spirits." I furrowed up my brow in confusion.

"Savage spirits? What do you mean? Nature is kind, rarely savage or cruel," I told him. He looked at me oddly, but began his next story regardless.

"There is a strange being living in those woods. Sometimes, people go in and never come out. A woman who once lived here told me that when she went to visit the old ruins, the trees creaked and screamed around her. She saw a handsome young man come out of a birch tree, and he bared his teeth at her and screamed with so much rage that she turned and ran immediately. Sometimes the teenagers like to go wander the forest on dark nights, and they always leave with stories of a man-eating tree spirit. They all say the same thing: that a man had exited a birch tree and taken them by surprise, killing some of their group before the rest could get away. Everyone in the city knows not to go into that forest, but there are always youths who think they know better than legend does," Sam told me. I felt sick again, and I quickly stood up. I could feel myself shaking, and I wondered if I was too far away to be affecting my tree.

"I, uhm, I'm sorry. I- thank you for the stories. J-Jacob was right, I've never heard those stories." I merely lived one of them. "I should, uhm, get going. I have a lot of things to do back home today, but thank you." I left the room as quickly as I could and ran face-first into Jacob, who was waiting outside the room. He caught my arms before I could step around him, and he gave me a strangely predatory smile.

"What did you think, Sunnie?" He hadn't called me that since long before the little girl was born. I swallowed thickly.

"They were, uh, very interesting," I exclaimed. He smiled even wider and let me go.

"Well, I think we should probably be heading home, don't you?" I nodded and left the store with him, and the walk back home was extraordinarily silent. The very air felt dead, and I still felt nauseated. The air was too thick, almost like it was trying to crush me. Jacob thanked me for going with him, giving me a tight hug and ruffling my hair up before disappearing into his tree. I wandered around for a while, looking idly at the quiet, ancient scenery. It was clear to me that the world had been turning for a lot longer than I realized, and that many centuries had passed while I was asleep.

It was by the crumbling wall that I found the first signs of what I feared: the skeleton was stripped bare, faintly-stained, white bones hidden by the shadow of the wall. It was far too new to be anything from the invasion that had ruined our lives. I'd been terrified while that man told me his stories, not because they were terrible thoughts or things I couldn't imagine, but because they'd planted a seedling in my heart. That seedling fed off the way Jacob had been acting, the way he'd gone dark inside that tree before I was hurt and the way he was too strange and different now, and it whispered in my ears that he'd gone entirely rotten. Finding the first of countless skeletons confirmed my fear: my brother was long gone. My brother was _eating_ humans. I finally threw up when I thought of something that made me beyond sick.

_What if he'd fed off the little girl's body while I was asleep?_

I stumbled back into my tree and, for the first time in my life, I thought that I never wanted to wake up again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mentions of fighting, drowning/being drowned, getting captured w the intent to be eaten, blood, and death

If it weren't for Jacob, I'd have slept forever. I could feel terror seeping into the ground, and then a burn-scarred hand pressed against my bark and I found myself tumbling out of the tree. The first thing I saw were the dark slacks Jacob wore. I looked up and saw the blood smeared around his mouth; then I saw the new stains on his shirt, and looking at his hands showed the blood covering them once more. I knew without looking that I had a hand-shaped bloodstain on my bark, but I looked anyway. Jacob pulled me to my feet and I pulled my hands out of his grasp as fast as I could. He tried to hold on, but despite his terrifying strength his hands were just too _wet_ to hold onto me. He ran his hands through his hair in frustration, and as he turned I saw the people on the ground behind him. Two or three were already long gone, stripped down to the bone like the bodies I'd found God-knows how long ago, but the other three were tied together with vines. They were all crying, and they were the source of the potent terror that had soaked into the ground.

When he turned back towards me, I pushed him away harshly. I was terrified, but I was also incredibly angry. Anger overtook his features, and I barely caught his hands as he tried to grab me.

"What are you _doing_ ," I demanded. He scoffed and tried to push me again. "Stop it! What the fuck is wrong with you?! Why are you eating people when you're a tree?! You can get everything you need from the ground and the sun, why can't you just rely on photosynthesis?!"

"They're invaders," he shouted back at me. His spit was pink with the blood in his mouth. "They're trying to steal our home from us! I'm trying to protect us!"

"Even if that were true, you don't have to kill them! Just scare them off! Even if you did, for some reason I can't even begin to _imagine_ , have to kill them, you don't have to eat them!" He pushed forward again, and I nearly lost balance and fell over; as it was, I stumbled back a few steps, closer to the group of people and the green pond behind them.

"I tried to scare them in the beginning, but they wouldn't stay away! The first time I killed one of them… something about it just felt right, Sunwoo! Maybe I don't have to kill them or eat them, but I won't lie and tell you I don't enjoy it! I thought you might too, but you've just been scornful towards and scared of me since you woke up again! I don't understand why! _You_ were the one that told me to rot! I did what you asked!" I let out a sob and finally lost my footing as he pushed against my hands again. I fell to the ground and his captives whimpered, still terrified. I tried for a moment to free them, but I couldn't overcome whatever magic he'd used.

"I'm sorry," I sobbed. "I didn't mean it! I didn't want this! I just wanted you to come outside and talk to me! I was scared and upset and you wouldn't come out and talk to me! I didn't mean it, I never wanted you to _rot_. I just wanted my brother!" He stayed hunched over me for a few seconds before rage distorted his face. I tried to back away from him as he got even closer, but my hand suddenly sank into mud and water and I knew I had nowhere else to go.

"I _am_ your brother," he yelled. "Everything I've done, I've done for _you_! I waited centuries for you to wake up! I protected us from men with axes and torches! I protected us from the city and its horrid people!" He was crying even as he yelled at me. "I tried to be what I thought you wanted me to be, Sunwoo! I tried so hard! You don't know how _lonely_ I was! I sat in front of your tree and waited everyday for _years_! I thought you hated me! And when you finally woke up, you acted like this?! I don't recognize you! You aren't my Sunnie!"

"I want Joonyoung back! You were kind and thoughtful! How do you think she'd feel if she saw you now," I demanded. His face went nearly blank, but I carried on anyway. "You aren't my brother! You aren't _our Joonyoung_ , you're a _monster_! She would never-"

And suddenly everything looked strange. I couldn't breathe without taking in water. It took me too long to realize that he'd pushed me into the pond. Its spirit had never returned, and I knew it in that moment because of the strange stale quality the water had. I choked on water and pushed against his arms, screaming at him to let me go as best I could. If I was still crying, I couldn't tell. I knew that if I really wanted to, I could use magic to get him off me; in the end, he still looked like my brother, and I would never be able to harm him.

The world began to go dark, and I took my right hand off his wrist. I wrenched my fingers beneath his and laced our fingers together: it was the last thing I could do to try and convince him that he could still be Joonyoung. He faltered and suddenly I could feel the slight breeze against my skin. He pressed me close to his chest, but I could feel that it was far too late. When I coughed, water and sap both came up. The sap was warm against my chin, but it cooled quickly. I blinked blearily as him as his mouth worked quickly. He was saying something, but I couldn't hear it. I coughed again and more sap came up. He wiped it away with a thumb that felt far too warm, and I gave him the best smile I could.

He laced our hands together again, but mine had already gone limp.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brief mentions of fighting, drowning, and death

The terrified prisoners had watched as their captor pulled another man out of a second birch tree. They looked similar in a way, and their clothes matched to an extent. The second man was barefoot as well, and that was what allowed them to see the unnatural shape of his foot. They watched as the second man pulled away from their captor, and then pushed the man. They gasped among themselves and listened to the fight that ensued. They couldn't understand most of what was said, but they all knew that the fight wasn't going to end well.

When their captor pushed his brother to the ground, they thought maybe it would end with a few blows being exchanged. When the crippled man on the ground suddenly brought up a woman they didn't know, it quickly became clear that it was a sensitive topic because it was only after this that their captor shoved his brother into the pond and held him there. The water bubbled as the man who'd been called Sunwoo and Sunnie by the captor struggled and screamed. They couldn't figure out why their captor suddenly pulled his brother out of the water and pressed him against his chest, but they knew the man was crying and assumed that it had been a sudden change of heart or protectiveness over his brother.

When the brother coughed, they expected blood to be among the water; instead, something translucent came from his mouth. It was after he coughed again and more came up that they remembered him coming out of the tree and assumed it to be tree sap. One of the three looked over at the trees and was shocked to find the one on the right swollen with water. It ran down the scarred trunk faster than the sap that welled up, and it took a few seconds to realize that the tree wasn't merely a home for the crippled man who'd left it: it _was_ the crippled man, just as the man was the tree.

The one who'd been looking at the tree missed the very instant when the brother died, but he saw the death in the slumping and cracking of the swollen tree. Their captor let out a distressed wail, and suddenly the vines holding them in place withered and died. The other two immediately clambered to their feet and ran for the ruins of the wall, but the one who'd been staring at the tree before it died walked over to the ruined remains of the thing. His captor continued to hold his brother's cold body and wail and sob, and he used the moment to reach up and pull a thin branch from one of the low hanging limbs. The tree continued to break down, and the man fled the ancient ruins of the garden.

The man never went back and never found out what happened to Sunwoo's brother, but he hoped that the man had found the error of his ways and stopped his predatory habits in respect for his brother. Back at his home, cities away and deep in the country, he walked into his empty backyard and carefully planted the stick right in the center of his yard. He knew he'd have to work to keep the tree healthy, but hoped that the pond was close enough to help the tree grow.

When, half a decade later, a young boy popped out of the tree, the man introduced himself as Lee Sangyeon and asked for the spirit's name in return. The boy had grey-blond hair and a certain resemblance to the two spirits who'd lived in that ruined garden, and he said his name was Eric, and then switched to Youngjae after a moment of confusion. Sangyeon told the boy that either of them would work, and he'd happily decided on using both.

Sangyeon--eternally single and uninterested in romance, and never having the time or money to adopt a child the proper way--looked after Eric the best he could. He knew he'd die before he got to see Eric grow very old, and that was the reason for the letter sitting in his desk drawer. Sangyeon could only hope that by the time Eric read the letter, the man who'd captured him with the intent to kill and eat him would have become kinder again and wouldn't kill his youngest brother as he had the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you got a happy ending in a way
> 
> Also, tell me if you'd be interested in a sequel from jacob's POV 👀 would be some of the same scenes from this and some after sunnie's death

**Author's Note:**

> find me on twt [@sunwooseok_](https://twitter.com/sunwooseok_?s=09)


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